The streets in south Phillywere steaming with that glowing lick of a lingering mist that could condensate from one second to the other into a thick sudden pour. The brick seemed more like brick and therefore Philly looked more like Phillyeven though I’ve never been in it before. It was 11 in the morning and by the time we were ready to go out the condensation broke into the predictable rain of the day. With the guitar on my back and the day in front of us there was nothing else to do but to walk about until we found a nice morning pub where we could wait for the rain to calm down.

This was the story for about three more bars until we finally ended up in Old City at a nice neighborhood park. The day was humid and the sun was almost out from behind the clouds. This park was a nice gathering place for people reading the NY Times and the most recent Dalai Lama novel/essay. Musicians gathered there tuning their instruments with one another. There was a duo of accordion and guitar in the center, an acoustic guitarist sitting on a bench to the north, another just sort of jamming to himself. It certainly wasn’t the place I would have chosen to busk. It had a nice vibe and all but it was too harmonious for me to interrupt with my loud and angry folk songs and to make any money when musicians where just jamming for free around me. Gustavo thought otherwise and later confessed his choice to be a sort of experiment: throw me in the midst of an ultra comfortable setting and see if it worked. It didn’t. I had lots of fun just feeling Philly surrounding me and knowing, being aware of my being within such a nice context, another city, another adventure, but hey…again in my adventurously stupid way I had driven to Philadelphia with just enough cash for one way tolling. So I needed cash to get back out of the city and I only got 3 bucks. I don’t know if it was the fact that my seeding money was just a few coins or if the fact that I chose to ironically put my credit card along those coins in the guitar case made it a little difficult for the random transient to believe that I really needed their support.

Whatever it was I just did a quick set and decided to walk little bit more to find something more street-like. So Gustavo thought of the perfect place: South Street on south Philly. We headed there but we stopped for a few more pints of beer so that I could be in my element, the element of blatant uninhibited self-confidence. When we arrived at South St. it looked like the perfect place, full of traffic, tourists, bars, coffee shops and noise. We walked for a while looking for a nice spot to set up my case and myself and as we were walking a guy from inside a bar, through an opened window, called me.

– Sure, I’ll give you five bucks, but for that price I wanna hear “Free Bird”.

– Sorry no “Free Bird”, I suck at covers, but I do have some southwestern fried folk from Texas…that should make up for it…

– Ok sure just sing us something.

So I put my case in the floor, opened it, grabbed my guitar and strapped it and quickly began to sing one of my new songs. The vibe was great, they were drunk enough to throw in another five bucks just for the sake of it and people around them began throwing in 1’s. Not too many but a good 3 or 4 in the space of two songs. We were about a block and a half away from the Obama South Philly headquarters and so every time an Obama girl would pass by my patrons would shout for the candidate in a futile effort to get one of them to have a beer with them. It was beautiful. Coming to think of it I guess I should have stayed longer, at least a couple of songs longer but I was so excited that I decided to go look for a busking pitch right away. We did find one but I was only able to play a couple of songs before the cops told me to stop…It was a good day to celebrate my 20th busk.

STRONG WINDS HAVE DEVELOPED ACROSS THE FORECAST AREA THISAFTERNOON AS EXPECTED. WIND SPEEDS SO FAR HAVE REMAINED AT
ADVISORY LEVELS OF 30 TO 4O MPH BUT STILL HAVE A POTENTIAL TO
REACH WARNING LEVELS OF GREATER THAN 40 MPH SUSTAINED BY LATE
AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING. WILL KEEP EXISTING HIGH WIND WARNING
IN PLACE UNTIL IT EXPIRES AT 9 PM LOCAL TIME. BLOWING DUST IS
BECOMING THICKER BUT DUE TO THE WESTERLY ORIENTATION OF THE WINDS MAY NOT REDUCE VISIBILITIES TO MUCH LOWER THAN 2 MILES. THE DUST WILL DIMINISH AS THE WINDS DIMINISH THIS EVENING. BUSKERS STAY HOME REGARDLESS OF HOW STUBBORNLY POSITIVE YOUR INCLINATION TO PLAY MAY PICTURE THE DAY. IT WILL BE AWFUL. REPEAT: IT WILL BE AWFUL.

If I could add anything to this, besides the obvious last paragraph, it would go something like: No shit mister satellite! I just didn’t think that the weather cared much about the before noon/ after noon arbitrariness and when I got out of my house it was still bearable. Once I crossed the border there was no lazy breeze like on wednesday but rather just a full blown garbage and dust gust. I still tried it for some reason, or lack thereof, actually. It was awful. My guitar case kept shutting closed, the lucky dollar kept threatening to escape into the atmosphere and people, like the many random garbage items, just passed flying by. Even behind their rather tight squints I could read their estranged gaze saying to me: “WTF are you doing here, didn’t you read the weather report?”- No, I didn’t but I could tell you more or less what it said.

Again, across the river, as a welcoming message, laid that smoggy hue. It was just there floating as if waving hello in slow motion, heavier than the power of the gentle breeze that felt too lazy to struggle with it.

I arrived to my area from the side street and discovered that a shop in the front, one of those predatory finance companies, had a PA system full blast with loud C music and an even louder DJ repeating over and over that they could get you out of debt…with a loan. So if I actually stood where I always do, at the left side of the main entrance to the museum, I would be straight across the speakers and would have had no voice by the end of the first song. I didn’t of course and opted to head towards the corner, probably one of the busiest corners in the whole 1.4.million people town. At first it was kind of difficult to hear myself but I then managed to modulate my voice and the guitar to get something out of it. I guess what usually helps me be louder just a hundred feet from there are the walls of the buildings facing me. At the corner my voice just goes everywhere without bouncing back.

I arranged mys guitar case with the essential anchor charm: a dollar bill and three coins holding it from flying out. The day was perfect and I played for a good hour, rested a little bit and then played a half more. As I have discussed in previous post, the mere fact of being there spraying my voice against the whole revolving chaos gives me sudden chuckles, outbursts of joy comparable to those expressed in a drunken state when surrounded by very good friends. I think its the nonsense of it all. I managed to gather a crowd that stayed for a whole song, that is always a pretty cool thing. It gave energy to continue playing after I had finished my first set. People even threw coins from cars which even though might be with the best of intentions it does not strike me as something I want hapening all the time.

I was nervously excited yet there wasn’t a way for me to overtly express it as obviously as I once did with frenetic pedaling when on a bicycle. Full speed-an amazing and mind boggling 18 mph- I surfed my Goped amidst the cars in central El Paso. Maybe my turns and zigzags were slightly more anxious, maybe my head was stiffer all the while, maybe I gave a few more fingers or yelled a few more obscenities to cellphone driver drones; maybe I did all of that at the same time, many times, at every a single swift of my wobbly Goped but I wouldn’t know. I was nervous.

I arrived at the downtown area where I surfed past the streets at cruising-speed but because of the narrowness of the lanes, the smallness of my being amongst the buildings and the ant-like illusion of the crowd I just felt faster, action-style faster. I arrived, I parked and I walked through the border. It’s funny but you can really smell it as soon as you are right halfway past the Rio Grande. A mixture smell of smog and lard flows towards your face as you walk down the bridge. It smells as it sounds as it tastes, like the language: spicy, spacey, spoty but also quite diffused…lardy. Something between a taco and a cloud.

I have this vision of an image being swallowed by a vacuum. That’s how it felt when I opened the guitar case on the sidewalk. Everything shut up as if absorbed by that hollow in the heart of my instrument. It was a beautiful day but I couldn’t play for that long. My fingers and throat need to readjust to the task.

So you thought I had made it big and forgotten all about the small time busking, right? Well, in case you don’t already know, I haven’t just yet and I haven’t forgotten about the busking thing either, how could I? Not long ago I told a painter friend of mine from Canada how the busking thing felt to me as if finally, after a long time, my soul was able to fit into that emotional suit it had been longing to fit into its entire life. I guess its not the busking thing in itself but rather the whole experience that has a certain element of Gipsyness and just playing out there brings my whole body to smile unexpectedly.

I know it has been a long time without a guitar but the past month has brought some good things. Two things specifically: A guitar of my own that arrived yesterday (I won’t say brands or anything like that because I frankly don’t care enough) and a Goped (a motorised standing scooter). So the busking thing just got a little easier. I have a case for the guitar and I can jump on that goped and head out full speed (20mph) towards the downtown crossing bridge. I’ll do that this coming week, so expect some more adventures being posted very very soon. Thanks for waiting!

I knew this day would come and even though it wasn’t a surprise it still slapped me hard. I was actually aware of slightly overstepping or nonchalantly abusing the situation by overlooking the issue all this time, but I had a purpose and purposes have this rare ability to bestow anybody’s criteria or convictions with what seems to be an ideal elasticity. Whether it is a matter of torture and bloodshed, like in a purist revolution of some sort, or some type of illegality like stealing a car to get to Frisco because you have a great novel to write, if you have a purpose, people will say: “well, at least he/she’s doing something.” The elasticity metaphor can be extended here a little bit more for it is the case that a stressed elastic body will eventually give in by either wearing its original integrity and resistance out or by breaking. In other words being elastic gets tiring. People will eventually come to terms and they’ll begin realizing that you are a rootless and oppressive dictator or just another romantically driven thief that can bullshit with style or, as it is my case, just somebody who has kept a guitar a little longer than expected. And so the call came. I overheard because the speaker in the phone was too loud and so before the message was given to me I was left staring blankly into the void in a limbo between the actual and the possible and, frankly, quite saddened. They’ll be picking it up tomorrow and I’ll be…well: guitarless to say the least. And well, to say the most: down, idle and occasionally even wildly distraught.

I’ve been thinking about the busking a great deal. I was to restart precisely tomorrow and now I have to rethink the whole deal. I guess I can stop and wait a few weeks so that I can buy myself an extremely inexpensive acoustic guitar that suits that capo I got for the holidays. Or (insert visuals of a nervous but exited smirk) I can try to busk in the meantime with another instrument and see how that works. I know I can’t move that 1974 Wurlitzer organ even an inch, so that is out of the question. Besides, I don’t know how to play it, I use it as a tuner. But besides the organ, a drum set and a violin we also own a little Turkish drum that I purchased in Istanbul and which used to accompany me in my hitch-hiking trips through central Mexico. I also busked with it a few times in Juarez when I was younger, I can try it again. I guess it’ll take me maybe three or four days to come up with at least a few decent patterns so that I don’t drive people crazy with the same drum beat for hours. Wish me luck. Or wish me a guitar, any will do.

I haven’t actually busked these past days, busy holiday schedules from the corporate side of the anti-cruisers have kept me from the streets, but today something interesting happened. I had some business to attend in downtown El Paso and as I was forming a line I recognized the gentleman in front of me.

He came and talked to me the first day I busked at the Museum pitch. When he first approached me I thought that he wasn’t all there, but as we spoke he struck me as an extremely lucid person only a little weird, but aren’t we all? He spoke four languages perfectly and a little french. That time he told me all about his home town in Jalisco. I happen to have been to that little town more than three times in my hitch hiking adventures, so we got to talk and he showed me some pictures and stuff. Anyway, I never saw him again until today, in front of me in this line. So I just told him: “You came from Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, right?” And he seemed taken aback, so he remained silent and then turned and said: “When did I mentioned that?” I told him how we had met in Juarez and stuff and he recalled the occasion. He didn’t say much though, it was his turn at the window and he went about his business. When he was done he just said good luck and took off. As I was talking to the lady at the window he approached me and asked: “Are you still playing there?” I told him that I still did at least twice a week, so he reached into his pocket and told me: “Here’s a little tip for next time.” He gave me 75 cents. It was the last tip of the year, or the first of the new one? Since it was given to me as a tip for next time I play and the next time will be next year… I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.